sidyadav - 1:40 am on Jul 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

> a large and growing user base has turned off active-x
> a growing user base is purposely blocking Flash entirely

I think I covered all that in:

The user does not prefer Flash The user does not know about Flash (and doesn't want to download it) The user is on a platform which does not support Flash (rare, but possible.)

Just didn't go into more specific details to keep with the pattern...

> Search engines don't do movie reviews.

ha! definitely agree with that. For those who want search engine rankings on a flash site: risk it, use cloaking.

And it's funny because most of us (excluding me ;)) like browsing with flash turned off. It's explainable because we are webmasters and we are updated with the latest IE vulnerabilities, holes etc. and we also know (as amznVibe said) that many Trojan's and Viruses use ActiveX which is indeed used by Flash.

But always remember -- your customers are mostly (generalizing) dumb/normal/non-webmasters. They have no idea/time to read on the latest IE vulnerability issues, nor do they have time to fix Trojans.

Which is where I think flash comes in. What a user wants is to know his or her product before buying it, and that is achievable by Flash -- for sure. By giving your users that dancing widgets, some may get impressed (normal), some may not (us), so there is that risk factor in there too.

But the thing to know is if you're planning to or already using flash, you've sure lost some potential webmaster traffic.

Sid